Summary:On February 29, 2010 Playstation 3 owners worldwide encountered a major bug with their systems. Although if you are looking at a calendar you should realize by now that in fact the date mentioned above does not exist. Well, every first generation PS3 thought otherwise which caused gamers of the system to go into an all out panic state, for it caused the consol to become basically a $600 paperweight. Because the system’s internal clock was programmed for 2010 to be a leap year, when the consol tried to sync up with the internet for a date that didn’t exist, it’s online network and features shut down completely. Now this might not sound like that big of a deal, “So what if I can’t go online for a day or two, I still have my single player games, right?”. Wrong. Because most of the single player game’s achievements and trophies were so tied in with the online and social aspect of the console, when players would try to load up a single player game they would get an error code. It was not long after to see hundreds of people reporting something being wrong with their system on many different sites, especially Twitter. Sony ended up basically waiting it out until the clocks were able to sync back up at a later time. To me the obvious question brought up was to what extent is social media effecting my single player experience. Response: I was actually a victim of this whole incident with the PS3 meltdown. It was Sunday night and when I started it up I immediately thought my consol was broken. I checked online about this error code I kept getting and found nothing for the first few minutes or so. But not long after I saw that more and more people were experiencing the same problems and was instantly relieved to know I was not alone. Though, the bizarre thing to me, and probably to most, was that because of our desire for a more social integration within our games, it ended up taking away from the single player side of it. For the most part everything we use now is dependent on its access to the internet, which is kind of scary when entertainment of all sorts have done fine without it in past years. I mean I love playing games with friends online, but developers of future consoles should be aware of the ripple effects social media can play into these games overall. Usefulness: Like I mentioned previously, developers of future consoles and game developers alike should be cautious of how the online and social networking part is interfering with the single player experience. http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/702893/PS3-Meltdown-Will-Time-Bring-A-Cure.html -Ian Keller
Social Networking Games:
Summary: In this article, Jon Swartz explains how these free to play games are becoming billion dollar industry’s over night. The ever so popular Farmville being the prime example starting with only 354 users one day after it’s launch, and as of January 2010 drastically increasing to 75.2 million plus users. Because of its simplistic and social nature anyone can hop in and play without having to worry about the complexities that tend to be associated with pc gaming. The article also touches on how this increasing popularity in social networking games are also changing the way in which big developers, such as Electronic Arts, decide to design games. All of these casual games work so well because of it being so integrated into the social aspect of it all. Bragging to friends on how well your crops are doing or getting the highest score in Scrabble for anyone in your group of friends to see, keeps users coming back for more. Micro transactions, which is virtual goods in exchange for real currency, is another big reason for company’s switching to the casual market. These goods usually allow the user to advance at a faster rate without having to sink as much time. Though if users decide not to pay for these virtual goods they end up inviting friends to join in order to advance, this creates a sort of chain reaction in gathering more and more new players. Response: I think it’s really amazing how popular these simple games have become as well as how profitable they are. It’s unbelievable to me that some video games from these big developers that have 100 men teams working on them and cost tens of millions of dollars to create can be outdone, in terms of user base, by a very simple and low tech casual game made by one or two guys. Its no wonder why these company’s are now turning to Facebook and Mysace as a platform for their games. These games are also so popular because they can be played for 5-10 minutes at a time and can run on any computer or laptop, whereas most pc games can mean having to take apart your computer to get it to run. Usefulness: I believe this shift in games could be useful for Indie developers whom are trying to get their games out to the public more easily. This also shows us how important it is to gamers to be able to socialize with others. This is a big difference to the usual formula of video game making in which the player is usual immersed into a virtual world to escape from his or her surroundings/people. http://www.diigo.com/09dkq
-Ian Keller
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Video Gamers In Social Media
This was an interesting article that did a study on video gamers and how they use social media to download, upload, and share content on the web. It uses graphs to explain how gamers use media, and what forms of media are used the most. Apps and Widgets came in at the highest media used at 31%, while blogs were only used less than 5%. They came across an interesting fact that gamers are two times more likely to share and upload photos than videos. It goes on to say that gamers are mostly influencing other gamers by either creating, uploading, sharing, or rating other gamers content. This constant stream of back and forth media is what makes up a video game community. The graph explaining gamers’ interests in social media was pretty straight forward. The majority of them were interested in the technology side of social media. Music and TV were the second biggest two. The article summarizes by saying ‘the social media space used by video gamers is not used for networking and socializing, but more than likely used to find and share information.
I thought this article was interesting because it used graphs to break down the different uses of social media in a video game community. There wasn’t a whole lot of information about social media, rather just studies showing how gamers use it. If I took one thing out of this, it would probably be that music and TV were the next two biggest interests in gamers. I don’t know if this whole article will be of use to me, but I will be able to use a couple statements in it to help back my inquiry. It does have interesting information on what age groups use what kind of media, and how women are 49% of gamers today. I think this article will be useful to anyone who wants to know more about what gamers are using in social media.
Original Article(the article is a pdf, says it cannot be highlighted/sticky noted)
-Mike Vallejo
Inquiry: How video game discussion boards are shaping the games we play.
The article I found is on the effect of discussion boards in the video game industry. It ties in very well into the inquiry I have on how discussion boards shape the games we play today. The article begins talking about how it’s not just the fans that are on these sites, but also the people working on the game. They’re always looking out for the helpful hint in which way the development of the game should go. One game site in particular, NeoGAF.com had 30 million visits in January 2009 alone. That many viewers drew the attention of the game companies looking for feedback on their games. In one part the article quotes a game director saying, “The online community is a good barometer of what "real" gamers are thinking and talking about. I can remember seeing the massive Oblivion discussion board and thinking, the game is doing well.” This article made me think about how all of these gamers are able to find websites like these so that they could voice their opinion on these games. Each game company usually has their own discussion boards where people can talk about only their games, and then there are boards where you can talk about any game on any console, and those are the ones that usually have a lot of discussions going on. What I found interesting is not only are the customer relations people from companies on these sights, but in a couple occasions the CEOs of companies were lurking through the discussions. I find this article useful in the sense that it is pretty much spot on my inquiry and really talks about the things I was interested in like why people are talking about games, and how they can gather in one place. I also found it very interesting that the upper management people would sometimes log on themselves. Annotated Link Original Article
-Mike Vallejo
Wii Active Feedback Improvements Make a Better Product
This article explains how public feedback on something good, can make it even better. When the Nintendo Wii Fit came out, a game in which the player could exercise and keep track of their work outs over periods of time, players loved the fact you could work out, but some of the games didn’t do a good job in categorizing people into fit, or obese categories. Some blamed it on the fact that the common Asian person is more slightly built than us westerners. Electronic Arts saw these complaints, and used it to make their new game, EA Sports Active, even better than before. They made sure to program the game to recognize the body type and health of different people regardless of where in the world they are. Using social medias like emails and discussion boards is what made this possible.
I think this is an interesting point because EA Sports had no intentions of changing their game until they started seeing all of the issues that the Wii Fit was having with Americans not having their own category. It makes me wonder how many games I’ve played in the past that were once one way, and then completely overhauled right before release due to negative feedback on a similar game. I would want to know more about just how many emails and complaints Nintendo received in order to create this much of a change in a game. This text may be useful to me in the sense that it helps prove that companies really do listen to what the people say if there is a big enough commotion, even if that means completely redoing your game when it was already ready to ship. It also shows that social media was used to make sure that change happened.
Social Media & It's Effects On Gaming Overall
Summary: On February 29, 2010 Playstation 3 owners worldwide encountered a major bug with their systems. Although if you are looking at a calendar you should realize by now that in fact the date mentioned above does not exist. Well, every first generation PS3 thought otherwise which caused gamers of the system to go into an all out panic state, for it caused the consol to become basically a $600 paperweight. Because the system’s internal clock was programmed for 2010 to be a leap year, when the consol tried to sync up with the internet for a date that didn’t exist, it’s online network and features shut down completely. Now this might not sound like that big of a deal, “So what if I can’t go online for a day or two, I still have my single player games, right?”. Wrong. Because most of the single player game’s achievements and trophies were so tied in with the online and social aspect of the console, when players would try to load up a single player game they would get an error code. It was not long after to see hundreds of people reporting something being wrong with their system on many different sites, especially Twitter. Sony ended up basically waiting it out until the clocks were able to sync back up at a later time. To me the obvious question brought up was to what extent is social media effecting my single player experience.Response: I was actually a victim of this whole incident with the PS3 meltdown. It was Sunday night and when I started it up I immediately thought my consol was broken. I checked online about this error code I kept getting and found nothing for the first few minutes or so. But not long after I saw that more and more people were experiencing the same problems and was instantly relieved to know I was not alone. Though, the bizarre thing to me, and probably to most, was that because of our desire for a more social integration within our games, it ended up taking away from the single player side of it. For the most part everything we use now is dependent on its access to the internet, which is kind of scary when entertainment of all sorts have done fine without it in past years. I mean I love playing games with friends online, but developers of future consoles should be aware of the ripple effects social media can play into these games overall.
Usefulness: Like I mentioned previously, developers of future consoles and game developers alike should be cautious of how the online and social networking part is interfering with the single player experience.
http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/702893/PS3-Meltdown-Will-Time-Bring-A-Cure.html
-Ian Keller
Social Networking Games:
Summary: In this article, Jon Swartz explains how these free to play games are becoming billion dollar industry’s over night. The ever so popular Farmville being the prime example starting with only 354 users one day after it’s launch, and as of January 2010 drastically increasing to 75.2 million plus users. Because of its simplistic and social nature anyone can hop in and play without having to worry about the complexities that tend to be associated with pc gaming. The article also touches on how this increasing popularity in social networking games are also changing the way in which big developers, such as Electronic Arts, decide to design games. All of these casual games work so well because of it being so integrated into the social aspect of it all. Bragging to friends on how well your crops are doing or getting the highest score in Scrabble for anyone in your group of friends to see, keeps users coming back for more. Micro transactions, which is virtual goods in exchange for real currency, is another big reason for company’s switching to the casual market. These goods usually allow the user to advance at a faster rate without having to sink as much time. Though if users decide not to pay for these virtual goods they end up inviting friends to join in order to advance, this creates a sort of chain reaction in gathering more and more new players.
Response: I think it’s really amazing how popular these simple games have become as well as how profitable they are. It’s unbelievable to me that some video games from these big developers that have 100 men teams working on them and cost tens of millions of dollars to create can be outdone, in terms of user base, by a very simple and low tech casual game made by one or two guys. Its no wonder why these company’s are now turning to Facebook and Mysace as a platform for their games. These games are also so popular because they can be played for 5-10 minutes at a time and can run on any computer or laptop, whereas most pc games can mean having to take apart your computer to get it to run.
Usefulness: I believe this shift in games could be useful for Indie developers whom are trying to get their games out to the public more easily. This also shows us how important it is to gamers to be able to socialize with others. This is a big difference to the usual formula of video game making in which the player is usual immersed into a virtual world to escape from his or her surroundings/people.
http://www.diigo.com/09dkq
-Ian Keller
===----=
Video Gamers In Social Media
This was an interesting article that did a study on video gamers and how they use social media to download, upload, and share content on the web. It uses graphs to explain how gamers use media, and what forms of media are used the most. Apps and Widgets came in at the highest media used at 31%, while blogs were only used less than 5%. They came across an interesting fact that gamers are two times more likely to share and upload photos than videos. It goes on to say that gamers are mostly influencing other gamers by either creating, uploading, sharing, or rating other gamers content. This constant stream of back and forth media is what makes up a video game community. The graph explaining gamers’ interests in social media was pretty straight forward. The majority of them were interested in the technology side of social media. Music and TV were the second biggest two. The article summarizes by saying ‘the social media space used by video gamers is not used for networking and socializing, but more than likely used to find and share information.
I thought this article was interesting because it used graphs to break down the different uses of social media in a video game community. There wasn’t a whole lot of information about social media, rather just studies showing how gamers use it. If I took one thing out of this, it would probably be that music and TV were the next two biggest interests in gamers. I don’t know if this whole article will be of use to me, but I will be able to use a couple statements in it to help back my inquiry. It does have interesting information on what age groups use what kind of media, and how women are 49% of gamers today. I think this article will be useful to anyone who wants to know more about what gamers are using in social media.
Original Article(the article is a pdf, says it cannot be highlighted/sticky noted)-Mike Vallejo
Inquiry: How video game discussion boards are shaping the games we play.
The article I found is on the effect of discussion boards in the video game industry. It ties in very well into the inquiry I have on how discussion boards shape the games we play today. The article begins talking about how it’s not just the fans that are on these sites, but also the people working on the game. They’re always looking out for the helpful hint in which way the development of the game should go. One game site in particular, NeoGAF.com had 30 million visits in January 2009 alone. That many viewers drew the attention of the game companies looking for feedback on their games. In one part the article quotes a game director saying, “The online community is a good barometer of what "real" gamers are thinking and talking about. I can remember seeing the massive Oblivion discussion board and thinking, the game is doing well.”This article made me think about how all of these gamers are able to find websites like these so that they could voice their opinion on these games. Each game company usually has their own discussion boards where people can talk about only their games, and then there are boards where you can talk about any game on any console, and those are the ones that usually have a lot of discussions going on. What I found interesting is not only are the customer relations people from companies on these sights, but in a couple occasions the CEOs of companies were lurking through the discussions. I find this article useful in the sense that it is pretty much spot on my inquiry and really talks about the things I was interested in like why people are talking about games, and how they can gather in one place. I also found it very interesting that the upper management people would sometimes log on themselves.
Annotated Link
Original Article
-Mike Vallejo
Wii Active Feedback Improvements Make a Better Product
This article explains how public feedback on something good, can make it even better. When the Nintendo Wii Fit came out, a game in which the player could exercise and keep track of their work outs over periods of time, players loved the fact you could work out, but some of the games didn’t do a good job in categorizing people into fit, or obese categories. Some blamed it on the fact that the common Asian person is more slightly built than us westerners. Electronic Arts saw these complaints, and used it to make their new game, EA Sports Active, even better than before. They made sure to program the game to recognize the body type and health of different people regardless of where in the world they are. Using social medias like emails and discussion boards is what made this possible.
I think this is an interesting point because EA Sports had no intentions of changing their game until they started seeing all of the issues that the Wii Fit was having with Americans not having their own category. It makes me wonder how many games I’ve played in the past that were once one way, and then completely overhauled right before release due to negative feedback on a similar game. I would want to know more about just how many emails and complaints Nintendo received in order to create this much of a change in a game. This text may be useful to me in the sense that it helps prove that companies really do listen to what the people say if there is a big enough commotion, even if that means completely redoing your game when it was already ready to ship. It also shows that social media was used to make sure that change happened.
Original Article
Annotated Link
-Mike Vallejo